On MONDAY, MAY 19, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Rajiv Shah and guests from across the public and private sectors will gather in Arlington, Va., to announce four years of results from President Obama’s Feed the Future initiative.

USAID is pleased with the Electrify Africa Act of 2014 passed today by the House of Representatives with strong bipartisan support. We thank Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Ed Royce, Ranking Member Eliot Engel, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa Chris Smith, and Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Africa Karen Bass for their leadership on H.R. 2548, and look forward to working with the Senate on complementary legislation.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) today celebrates its support of the delivery of 1 billion Neglected Tropical Disease (NTD) treatments that are helping more than 465 million people in 25 countries in some of the world’s poorest populations.

The National Basketball Association (NBA) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) today launched Live, Learn and Play, a new partnership that will include a comprehensive basketball-based youth development program aimed at using the values of the game including leadership, character and teamwork to promote youth development and citizenship in 20 schools in Senegal.

Studies show successes with high quality voluntary medical male circumcision

U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, funded research studies released today in PLOS ONE and PLOS Medicine. These studies provide evidence that safe, high quality voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) services performed by trained healthcare professionals in low resource settings can be implemented and sustained at scale and has the potential to significantly prevent new HIV infections in adolescent and adult men.

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Rajiv Shah will travel to Abuja, Nigeria, May 6-9 to attend the 24th World Economic Forum (WEF) on Africa, “Forging Inclusive Growth, Creating Jobs.” WEF will bring together more than 1,000 leaders from across politics, business, and civil society, including 11 African heads of state and government, to focus on development and economic opportunity throughout Africa. Administrator Shah’s participation in WEF events will focus on strengthening food security, ensuring greater access to reliable energy, and raising awareness on the U.S. Government’s effort to support peace and bring an end to violence in South Sudan.

Today, USAID announced the launch of nine innovative partnership grants with U.S. universities in the field of democracy, human rights and governance (DRG). The grants will produce cutting-edge research, including findings and recommendations for USAID’s Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights and Governance (DRG Center).

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is providing an additional $1.25 million to the U-MEDIA program in Ukraine, a project of Internews and its Ukrainian partner organizations aimed at supporting Ukrainian media outlets as they prepare for the Ukrainian presidential election on May 25th. Members of the media in Ukraine have faced serious challenges and dangers over the past several months. More than 500 journalists have been harassed, beaten, abducted and one journalist killed, since November. Media outlets have been attacked and news-gathering equipment has been seized or destroyed.

A distinguished panel, chaired by retired Senior Foreign Service Officer Wayne King, selected five 2014 USAID Donald M. Payne International Development Fellows. This selection followed a rigorous competition that included over 275 applicants from around the United States and the world. The panel reviewed their applications, selected 18 finalists, and conducted a three-day assessment, which included interviews, timed essays, and group exercises.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the building collapse at Rana Plaza in Dhaka, Bangladesh that claimed over 1,100 lives and injured thousands more – the worst industrial disaster in the history of the garment industry. Like the Triangle Shirtwaist disaster in the United States over one hundred years ago, Rana Plaza, and the Tazreen factory fire that preceded it in November 2012, have become potent symbols of the significant and unnecessary risks that many workers are still forced to take in order to earn a living and support their families. As we mourn the victims, we are again called to action so that tragedies like Rana Plaza and Tazreen never happen again.

To foster innovation in Mexico, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Rajiv Shah, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Earl Anthony Wayne, and Mexican Secretary of Economy Ildefonso Guajardo today awarded four Mexican entrepreneurs with grants through USAID's Innovation Fund for the Americas.

The Governments of the United States and Mexico today partnered with the Government of El Salvador to increase cacao production as an alternative source of income for rural farmers affected by the coffee rust outbreak.

Shah leads U.S. delegation to discuss effective development cooperation

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Rajiv Shah will travel to Mexico City from April 15-16 to lead the U.S. delegation for the first High-Level Meeting of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation (GPEDC).

The United States today reaffirmed its strong commitment to the people of Ukraine and their democratic transition by signing a $1 billion sovereign loan guarantee agreement with the Ukrainian Government. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew and Ukraine Minister of Finance Oleksandr Shlapak participated in the signing ceremony in the Cash Room at the Department of Treasury in Washington, D.C.

The heads of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the European Union (EU) Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response today called for more support for the people of South Sudan, who have been severely affected by conflict, displacement and food insecurity.

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Administrator Rajiv Shah, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos and EU Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid, and Crisis Response Kristalina Georgieva will co-host a press conference on Saturday, April 12, at the UN Foundation in Washington, D.C., to underscore the severity of the growing humanitarian crisis in South Sudan. The officials will also share information about new efforts to raise awareness about the crisis.

MIAMI, FL – The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) today named international Latin pop singer/song writer Carlos Vives as the Agency’s first Inclusion Ambassador. In this role, Vives will promote social and economic inclusion of Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities in Colombia, which is essential to overcome decades of conflict and move towards peace.

It is longstanding U.S. policy to help Cubans increase their ability to communicate with each other and with the outside world. Working with resources provided by Congress for exactly this purpose, USAID is proud of its work in Cuba to provide basic humanitarian assistance, promote human rights and universal freedoms, and to help information flow more freely to the Cuban people.

On April 3, U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Rajiv Shah unveiled the U.S. Global Development Lab. The Lab will foster science-and technology-based solutions to help end extreme poverty by 2030.